Software-as-a-Service (“SaaS”) is a software licensing and delivery model in which software is licensed on a subscription basis and is centrally hosted. SaaS is typically accessed by users using a thin client via a web browser. SaaS has become a common delivery model for many business applications, including office and messaging software, payroll processing software, database management software, development software, virtualization, accounting, collaboration, customer relationship management (CRM), management information systems (MIS), enterprise resource planning (ERP), invoicing, human resource management (HRM), content management (CM) and service desk management. SaaS has been incorporated into the strategy of many leading enterprise software companies. One of the biggest selling points for these companies is the potential to reduce information technology (IT) support costs by outsourcing hardware and software maintenance and support to the SaaS provider.
SaaS providers face the possibility of service interruptions daily due to the nature of personal and business patterns. For example, thousands of individuals may log into a fantasy football application at about the same time as the football game is about to start. In another example, hundreds of thousands of individuals may start to read e-mails from their e-mail application at the start of the work day (e.g., 8:30 am). In a further example, millions of tweets may occur in response to a tweet or during an event (e.g., World Cup). Hence, there may be times when the servers at the service infrastructure of the SaaS provider may be potentially overloaded with servicing requests from users.
When such a situation occurs, there are various means in attempting to address the situation, such as adding more servers, redirecting the requests being handled by a server subject to a potential overload condition to another server, etc. However, the servers may not be added in time to address the potential service interruption thereby causing the SaaS provider to experience service load interruptions. The server subject to being overloaded may not have time to redirect some of the requests it is handling to another server thereby causing the SaaS provider to experience service load interruptions.
If, however, additional time could be provided to the SaaS provider to handle potential service load interruptions, then the SaaS provider may be able to address the problem in an appropriate manner.